Monday, September 17, 2012

The First From The Citadel

Confederate
Colonel Charles Courtenay Tew was killed September 17th 1862 while
in action at the Battle of Sharpsburg.

Charles
Courtenay Tew was born in Charleston, South Carolina October 17th
1827, the son of Henry Shade and Caroline (Courtenay) Tew.He was part of the first class of the South
Carolina Military Academy which has become known at the Citadel.Tew graduated in 1846 at the top of his
class.Following his graduation he
taught at the school until 1852 when he spent a year in Europe studying
military tactics.Tew would return to
the Citadel where he would be the Commandant of Cadets until 1857, when he
became the superintendent of the Arsenal Academy in Columbia, South Carolina.

Tew was
appointed June 20th 1861, the Colonel of the 2nd North
Carolina Infantry by Confederate North Carolina Governor John Willis Ellis when
that state seceded.The 2nd
was attached to the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in Brigadier General
George Burgwyn Anderson’s brigade.When
Anderson was killed at the Battle of Sharpsburg, Tew took over command of the
brigade.In the afternoon of September
17th 1862, the brigade were located along the Sunken Road near the
center of the Confederate line.Tew and
Colonel John Brown Gordon were placing men in line when both men were hit.Gordon would say of this spot, "The
first volley from the Union lines in my front sent a ball through the brain of
the chivalric Colonel Tew, of North Carolina, to whom I was talking, and
another ball through the calf of my right leg. On the right and the left my men
were falling under the death-dealing crossfire."

When the
Confederates left the area of the Sunken Road, Tew’s body was left behind.He was never identified.After war was over a former Union Captain, J
W Bean sent a silver cup to Tew’s father in October 1874, claiming he had taken
the cup off Tew’s body before his burial.